I would like to get some real facts on Plagueis' abilities at his peak. Clearly Sidious feared to take him on face to face, but having not yet read the novel I don't know what is revealed about him in actual combat.
Info?
Orbed Bane gives pretty much anyone a bad day. His vulnerability there is minimal to say the least. DoE is quick and skilled in sabers and arcane technique, but everything I know says that Plagueis is as well, and that even with the little known of him he is one of the greatest Sith ever.
Originally posted by Ascendancy
I would like to get some real facts on Plagueis' abilities at his peak. Clearly Sidious feared to take him on face to face, but having not yet read the novel I don't know what is revealed about him in actual combat.Info?
Orbed Bane gives pretty much anyone a bad day. His vulnerability there is minimal to say the least. DoE is quick and skilled in sabers and arcane technique, but everything I know says that Plagueis is as well, and that even with the little known of him he is one of the greatest Sith ever.
Lol no, his vulnerability to Sith lightning is a major disadvantage.
Plagueis atomized his assailants with Force waves waaaay more potent than Bane's.
Im not so convinced that Plagueis was that great of a duelist based on novel feats.
He had a hard time in the early days against Venamis, who at best would have been mediocre.
ROT & DOE versions to stomp for me. If it was a straight force contest im sure Plagueis would hold his ground but bane with sabre in hand, unstoppable here.
Originally posted by Darth Banus
Im not so convinced that Plagueis was that great of a duelist based on novel feats.He had a hard time in the early days against Venamis, who at best would have been mediocre.
ROT & DOE versions to stomp for me. If it was a straight force contest im sure Plagueis would hold his ground but bane with sabre in hand, unstoppable here.
Plagueis' Force speed was demonstrated to be at least on par with Sidious', if not downright superior.
In lightsaber combat, Sidious was bested only by the likes of Mace Windu and Luke Skywalker. Whose styles also strongly advocated a massive use of Force speed.
Sidious won duels in seconds with Maul, Maul straight beat Qui-Gon and an inexperienced Obi-wan before being caught by surprise by the former.
If Sidious opted to avoid a direct duel against Plagueis with all his guile that costed him his flesh against Windu, and his hand against Luke, I'd assume Plagueis wrecks Bane in the blink of an eye during a lightsaber duel.
Furthermore, Sidious also didn't play around with Yoda or Galen Marek when the time came to take care of business, like he did with Mace and Luke and everyone else he fought.
He was scared to battle Yoda just like his master Plagueis, and he did NOT duel with Galen, he went Sith Lightning right off the bat, low intensity hoping for an apprentice as opposed to a martyr, then high intensity to kill a lost cause.
Sidious sees only beings on par with him in esoteric ability as a threat, not good lightsaber duelists.
What does that say about Plagueis' command of the Force and its relevance in direct melee?
I think his superior power in the dark side would speak louder volumes than Bane's skill with a lightsaber. Although Plagueis was VERY lethal in both lightsaber combat and hand to hand.
Even in the event of multi-organ failure, Plagueis is lethal because he can stop himself from dying even when his vital organs are destroyed completely.
The Sidious that you all refer to is post Plagueis , remembering that after Sidious killed his master he instantaneously went up a in force power, in the same way Plagueis did after destroying his master.
So pre the rise im sure Sidious would have been very cautious to engage his master and rightly so! But after maybe not so much? Although as per battle with yoda he did try and avoid direct battle in 50/50 conflicts.
In his matches vs mace yoda luke galen etc we are talking about a MUCH more powerful Sidious which I am sure also equates to a much faster Sidious. By that logic I think it would be fair to say that Plagueis never stood in front off the Sidious we have all come to know and love.
To me in this fight Plagueis is a wise and skilful Dooku, Bane is a raw and powerful Annie.
Originally posted by Intrepid37
Plagueis was able to defeat Venamis who was trained to fight Plagueis, was trained in the forms to defeat Plagueis, knew Plagueis' style etc.Yet Plagueis defeating him is a showing of much skill considering that Marek knew all of Vader's styles yet Vader couldn't defeat him.
Tenebrous didnt train Venamis specifically in techniques to defeat plagueis, he trained him to be a sith, not a "plagueis assassin" he thought Plagueis was unworthy & was looking for a replacement.
tenebrous would have just killed Plagueis himself if that's what he wanted.
Originally posted by Darth Banus
Tenebrous didnt train Venamis specifically in techniques to defeat plagueis, he trained him to be a sith, not a "plagueis assassin" he thought Plagueis was unworthy & was looking for a replacement.
tenebrous would have just killed Plagueis himself if that's what he wanted.
No?
Worse for Plagueis, Tenebrous had made Venamis an expert in Plagueis's style, and so the Bith could not only anticipate but counter Plagueis's every move.
Originally posted by Intrepid37
No?Worse for Plagueis, Tenebrous had made Venamis an expert in Plagueis's style, and so the Bith could not only anticipate but counter Plagueis's every move.
Yea, all that confirms is he taught him the same style?
I really think your missing the point of the Sith here. Tenebrous thought Plagueis was to weak to carry the mantle, so he trained Ven on the side, with Vens final trail being a confrontation with Plag. Had he succeeded he would have proved himself worthy. It would be counter productive to his goals to simply create a 1 hit wonder.
so i say no, Venamis had to prove himself worthy to be #2
Originally posted by pencilcrayon
If Plagueis/Sidious are weaker than Bane, then Bane failed in his one true goal.
I think it is pretty well canon that Sids sits at the top of the Sith tree. so for a time, yes goal complete.
If you are hinting at the logic that since Sids become all powerful his master must have been ? then who the hell was Yoda's master "N'Kata Del Gormo" ? and were does he sit on the list of all time great Jedi??
Not every proceeding Sith lord to Bane was stronger than the previous, just the really strong ones got to old & weak, dropped there guard at the wrong time or in banes case, got taken out by some next level force spell that could possibly have dropped all the major players; light or Dark.
For the record i do consider Plagueis to be a great sith lord, just more of a book worm. all caged up in his study for the later years, trying to crack immortality. I cant be bothered to look for it but i am sure there is a quote or 2 in the last 3rd of his book about him not keeping up with his sword play. Bane trained day and night for combat. He lived for it.
They have deflected bolts from a miniature army. Anakin can see sublight speedships and yet Palpatine was a complete blur for him. He has also deflected fire from an army. It puts him at near lightspeed. Plagueis could more or less do the same.
On Hypori they were the prey, standing back-to-back in their black zeyd-cloth hooded robes at the center of concentric rings of droids, retrofitted by Baktoid Armor to function as combat automata. Two hundred programmed assailants—bipedal, treaded, some levitated by antigrav generators—armed with a variety of weapons, ranging from hand blasters to short-barreled burst-rifles. Plagueis hadn't allowed his young apprentice to wield a lightsaber until a few years earlier, but Sidious was brandishing one now, self-constructed of phrik alloy and aurodium, and powered by a synthetic crystal. Made for delicate, long-fingered hands—as much a work of art as a weapon—the lightsaber thrummed as he waved the blade from side to side in front of him.
"Every weapon, manufactured by whatever species, has its own properties and peculiarities," Plagueis was saying, his own blade angled toward the ferrocrete floor of the battledome's fabricated cityscape, as if to light a fuse. "Range, penetrating power, refresh rate... In some instances your life might depend on your ability to focus on the weapon rather than the wielder. You must train yourself to identify a weapon instantly—whether it's a product of BlasTech or Merr-Sonn, Tenloss or Prax—so that you will know where to position yourself, and the several ways to best deflect a well-aimed bolt."
Plagueis put his words into action as the first ring of droids began to converge on them, staggering the attack and triggering bursts at random. Orbiting Sidious, the Muun's blade warded off every volley, returning the bolts to their sources, or deflecting them into the facades of the faux buildings surrounding them or into other droids. At other times Plagueis made no attempt to redirect the attacks, but simply torqued his rangy body, allowing the bolts to miss him by centimeters. Around the two Sith, the automata collapsed one after the next, gushing lubricants from holed reservoirs or exploding in a hail of alloy parts, until all were heaped on the ferrocrete floor.
"The next ring is yours," Plagueis said.
Rugged, uninhabited Hypori belonged to the Techno Union, whose Skakoan foreman, Wat Tambor, owed his seat in the Republic Senate to Damask Holdings. In exchange, the bionic humanoid had made Hypori available as a training ground for members of the Echani Sun Guard and provided the necessary battle droids. Calling in another favor, Hego Damask had requested a private session in the fabricated cityscape, so that Plagueis and his apprentice could be free to employ lightsabers—though only for the purpose of deflecting bolts rather than dismemberment or penetration.
When it came Sidious's turn to demonstrate his skill, Plagueis spoke continuously from behind him, adding distraction to the distinct possibility of inadvertent disintegration.
"A being trained in the killing arts doesn't wait for you to acquire him as a target, or establish him or herself as an opponent, as if in some martial arts contest. Your reactions must be instantaneous and nothing less than lethal, for you are a Sith Lord, and will be marked for death."
The droids continued to converge, ring after ring of them, until the floor was piled high with smoking husks. Plagueis issued a voice command that brought the onslaught to an abrupt end and deactivated his lightsaber. The pinging of cooling weapons, the hiss of escaping gas, the unsteady whir of failing servomotors punctuated the sudden silence. Alloy limbs spasmed and photoreceptors winked out, surrendering their eerie glow. The recycled air was rotten with the smell of fried circuitry.
--Taken from Darth Plagueis
"Jedi don't need luck," Anakin said, just as the attack droids swarmed into the hangar.
Blaster fire erupted from the droids, aimed at Anakin but scattered enough so that he feared for Marit and the others. The squad dropped, scrambling for their blasters. Anakin saw at once his problems. Gillam and Rolai had found blasters and were trying to aim at him as he moved.
Fire from the droids was heavy. Marit had ducked behind a starfighter. He did not think he could count on help from her. She seemed dazed. He saw the smile of triumph on Gillam's face as he retrieved and aimed his blaster, and Anakin's anger returned. He reached out to the Force. He remembered the lessons he had learned from Soara Antana, the great Jedi Master. The Force comes from stillness, she had said. Find your still center, even in the midst of battle.
He saw time unspool before him like a ribbon. He saw it freeze like ice on a river. He saw that he had infinite time to do everything he needed.
With an outstretched hand he knocked the blaster from Gillam's grasp and sent it flying across the full space of the hangar. It hit the wall so hard it shattered. Gillam's smile disappeared. At the same time he was moving, diverting the droids' blaster fire from where Tulah and Hurana had taken cover, pushing Ze behind a durasteel container, and knocking out one attack droid with a thrust to its control panel.
Suddenly the laser cannons from the starfighter on his right began to fire. Gillam had slipped inside the cockpit. Anakin did not lose his sense of frozen time. He was the master of time. He did not worry about the laser cannons any more than he'd worried about the attack droids. It all seemed so easy. He seemed to see the fire before it came, and he knew how to move to avoid it. His movements were like shimmersilk, so fluid it was as though he did not have muscles and bones, only will.
Now his Master was here. He could feel that, too. But he did not need him. He spun in midair, taking out two battle droids while he leaped through the laser cannonfire straight at the cockpit of the starfighter. With one backward slash he took out the final droid. He had a flash of Gillam's shocked face as he cut through the windscreen with one slice. With one hand, he threw Gillam out of the pilot's seat and then dropped into it. He turned off the engines and disabled the laser cannons.
Siri and Ferus stood, lightsabers drawn, guarding Rolai, Marit, Hurana, Tulah, and Ze. Obi-Wan had captured Rana Halion. Across the space, he looked at his Master. He waited for Obi-Wan to acknowledge him. The mission was over. He had been successful. He had found Gillam and thwarted an invasion. He waited, standing in the cockpit, looking down. He could feel the flush of triumph on his cheeks. Siri glanced at him, as did Ferus. He could see the astonishment on their faces. But his Master never looked up.
Never had Obi-Wan seen such a display of the Force from a Padawan. From the great Jedi Masters, yes. From Qui-Gon, near the end of his life. But from someone so young? Anakin's power astonished him. He had glimpsed it before, but now he had seen it unfurl, and it staggered him.
He had not had a chance to move, to help. Anakin had been a blur. He had seemed to be everywhere at once. He had destroyed ten attack droids, disarmed his aggressors, and disabled two laser cannons without hesitation, with even a slight smile on his face.
--Taken from Jedi Quest: The School of Fear
What happened next would have consequences yet undreamed of; it was as if Anakin Skywalker were having an epiphany. In a microsecond he saw what was coming and knew where it would lead him, but he was powerless to interfere. He felt like a headstrong and disobedient child being forced to sit still and watch a puppet show. A battle droid stepped into the room from the far side and leveled its blaster at Anakin. Reija Momen stepped in front of him just as the droid fired. The bolt, fired at low power, hit her squarely in the chest and slammed her back into Anakin.
Anakin moved with the swiftness and brilliance of a burning sun. Droids rushed against him, their weapons firing indiscriminately. His lightsaber flashing in a blinding symphony of light and destruction, he parried the bolts effortlessly, sending some ripping through the walls and roof, others back into the very droids that had fired them. He wasn't defending now, he was attacking, attacking with such fury and destruction that nothing could stop him. And he knew where he was going—he was headed for the enemy command post.
The droids, unable to give way, unable to surrender even if Anakin would have spared them, flew apart like cheap dolls as the lightsaber cut through them in a broad swath of destruction. The clone troopers following the Jedi had difficulty finding targets, and stumbled over the debris he left in his passage through the complex. They merely followed in his wake, covering his back. Before long he was outside the building and heading with unerring accuracy toward Pors Tonith's bunker. It seemed as if Tonith's entire army was firing at Anakin, but as he ran at full speed over the uneven ground that separated the communications facility from Tonith's command bunker, not a single bolt touched him. The troopers following\ hugged the ground and crawled painfully onward while their commander stood erect and ran unscathed through the burning trajectories of death.
--Taken from Jedi Trial
Obi-Wan was already making that exact move as Anakin spoke. But they were inverted to each other: breaking right shot him one way while Anakin whipped the other. The tri-fighters' cannons ripped space between them, tracking faster than their starfighters could slip. His onboard threat display chimed a warning: two of the droids had remote sensor locks on him. The others must have lit up his partner. "Anakin! Slip-jaws!"
"My thought exactly."
They blew past the tri-fighters, looping in evasive spirals. The droid ships wrenched themselves into pursuit maneuvers that would have killed any living pilot. The slip-jaws maneuver was named for the scissorlike mandibles of the Kashyyyk slash-spider. Droids closing rapidly on their tails, cannonfire stitching space on all sides, the two Jedi pulled their ships through perfectly mirrored rolls that sent them streaking head-on for each other from opposite ends of a vast Republic cruiser. For merely human pilots, this would be suicide. By the time you can see your partner's starfighter streaking toward you at a respectable fraction of lightspeed, it's already too late for your merely human reflexes to react.
But these particular pilots were far from merely human.
The Force nudged hands on control yokes and the Jedi starfighters twisted and flashed past each other belly-to-belly, close enough to scorch each other's paint.
Skywalker was all over him.
The shining blue lightsaber whirled and spat and every overhand chop crashed against Dooku's defense with the unstoppable power of a meteor strike; the Sith Lord spent lavishly of his reserve of the Force merely to meet these attacks without being cut in half, and Skywalker—
Skywalker was getting stronger.
Each parry cost Dooku more power than he'd used to throw Kenobi across the room; each block aged him a decade. He decided he'd best revise his strategy once again. He no longer even tried to strike back. Force exhaustion began to close down his perceptions, drawing his consciousness back down to his physical form, trapping him within his own skull until he could barely even feel the contours of the room around him; he dimly sensed stairs at his back, stairs that led up to the entrance balcony. He retreated up them, using the higher ground for leverage, but Skywalker just kept on coming, tirelessly ferocious.
That blue blade was everywhere, flashing and whirling faster and faster until Dooku saw the room through an electric haze and now Kenobi was back in the picture: with a shout of the Force, he shot like a torpedo up the stairs behind Skywalker, and Dooku decided that under these rather extreme circumstances, it was at least arguably permissible for a gentleman to cheat.
Anakin's speeder shrieked through the rain, dodging forked bolts of lightning that shot up from towers into the clouds, slicing across traffic lanes, screaming past spacescrapers so fast that his shock-wake cracked windows as he passed.
Exchanges flashed. Leaps were sideslipped or met with flying kicks; ankle sweeps skipped over and punches parried. The door of the control center fell in pieces, and then they were inside among the bodies. Consoles exploded in fountains of white-hot sparks as they ripped free of their moorings and hurtled through the air. Dead hands spasmed on triggers and blaster bolts sizzled through impossibly intricate lattices of ricochet.
Obi-Wan barely caught some and flipped them at Anakin: a desperation move. Anything to distract him; anything to slow him down. Easily, contemptuously, Anakin sent them back, and the bolts flared between their blades until their galvening faded and the particles of the packeted beams dispersed into radioactive fog.
--Taken from Revenge of the Sith
Plagueis revives Darth Venamis from death repeatedly, heals scar tissue in his own body, and increases his midi-chlorian count.
Bane was never particularly skilled in healing abilities.
On the same day they had allowed Venamis to die.
Then, by manipulating the Bith’s midi-chlorians, which should have been inert and unresponsive, Plagueis had resurrected him. The enormity of the event had stunned Sidious into silence and overwhelmed and addled 11-4D’s processors, but Plagueis had carried on without assistance, again and again allowing Venamis to die and be returned to life, until the Bith’s organs had given out and Plagueis had finally granted him everlasting death.
But having gained the power to keep another alive hadn’t been enough for him. And so after Sidious had returned to Coruscant, he had devoted himself to internalizing that ability, by manipulating the midi-chlorians that animated him. For several months he made no progress, but ultimately he began to perceive a measured change. The scars that had grown over his wounds had abruptly begun to soften and fade, and he had begun to breathe more freely than he had in twenty years. He began to sense that not only were his damaged tissues healing, but his entire body was rejuvinating itself. Beneath the transpirator, areas of his skin were smooth and youthful, and he knew that eventually he would cease to age altogether.
Drunk on newfound power, then, he had attempted an even more unthinkable act: to bring into being a creation of his own. Not merely the impregnation of some hapless, mindless creature, but the birth of a Forceful being. The ability to dominate death had been a step in the right direction, but it wasn’t equivalent to pure creation. And so he had stretched out—indeed, as if invisible, transubstantiated—to inform every being of his existence, and impact all of them: Muunoid or insectoid, secure or dispossessed, free or enslaved. A warrior waving a banner in triumph on a battlefield. A ghost infiltrating a dream.
But ultimately to no end.
The Force grew silent, as if in flight from him, and many of the animals in his laboratory succumbed to horrifying diseases.
Regardless, eight long years later, Plagueis remained convinced that he was on the verge of absolute success. The evidence was in his own increased midi-chlorian count; and in the power he sensed in Sidious when he had finally returned to Sojourn. The dark side of the Force was theirs to command, and in partnership they would someday be able to keep each other alive, and to rule the galaxy for as long as they saw fit.
--Taken from Darth Plagueis